


Good-Morrow to Our Waking Souls

by pellucid



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 01:06:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pellucid/pseuds/pellucid
Summary: Patrick falls in love.





	Good-Morrow to Our Waking Souls

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always thought we must have missed some key interactions in series 2 to get Patrick and Sister Bernadette from where they were at the beginning to where they were at the end. This is an attempt to fill in some of that.
> 
> As ever, gabolange makes me a much better writer than I would be without her careful beta attention (even when we sometimes agree to disagree about the proper versus practical function of the comma in compound sentences). Remaining superfluous commas, and all other mistakes, are my own.

If he were honest with himself, Patrick couldn’t remember when he had last taken time to pause, catch his breath, rest. From the time Marianne first fell ill, he had done his best to manage first dread, and then grief, with frenzied action. His responsibilities to his work and his son filled his days with ample distraction from dangerous brooding and exhausted him enough that each night he could fall asleep before he had too much time to think about the empty width of his bed.

Therefore this evening, having shepherded Timothy off to Jack’s house, he found himself hunched over a desk at Nonnatus House, poring over every detail of the Kelly baby’s brief life. 

He was distracted, though, by the life of the house. Laughter around the dinner table, the telephone ringing, the clattering of dishes washed and put away. He wouldn’t have noticed, he thought, if Sister Bernadette hadn’t surprised him earlier, hadn’t pulled him out of himself and made him pause, just for a moment.

He’d grown so accustomed to the rote familiarity of polite exchanges that he was startled when she deviated from his expectations. He didn’t talk to anyone anymore, not really. Professionally, of course, he talked to patients and colleagues every day, including the nuns and nurses. He talked to Timothy, though more about chores and homework than anything else. He talked to his mother-in-law about Timothy’s grief and Timothy’s schedule. But when had he last had a conversation with another adult about anything that wasn’t work or small talk? He couldn’t remember. And then Sister Bernadette had surprised him and showed him a glimpse of a perspective he wouldn’t have anticipated from her.

The worst things in his adult life—the war, the loss of his wife—had cemented his lack of faith. But he also always envied those who managed to get through such things with a belief in God intact; surely they had a comfort, an extra reserve of strength, that he didn’t. But Sister Bernadette suggested it didn’t make a difference, and he wanted to know more. He wanted her to stay, to explain to him what she meant.

She hadn’t, and he’d returned to his reading. But then he’d heard her voice in the dining room, though not distinctly enough to catch her words. Later he was pulled from his work again by her laugh, and again by her gentle chiding of Sister Monica Joan for having gotten into the cake. 

He thought it curious that one line from her could disrupt his habits this much, could suddenly make him attuned to the sound of her voice. Every time he heard it, he wished she would come back so he could talk to her.

The evening meal had finished, and he realized a hush had fallen over the house as the nuns moved to the chapel for their compline service. It was later than he had realized, and he needed to pick up Timothy. He was packing up his notes when they began to sing. 

_The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.  
He will not always chide: neither will he keep his anger for ever._

He again recognized Sister Bernadette’s voice, realized that her clear tones were leading the singing. He picked up his bag and pulled on his coat, but the music tugged at his attention. He stopped in the darkened hallway for a moment, listening.

_He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.  
For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him._

He thought of the Kellys, with their fresh and unimaginable grief. He thought of his own son, pushed into too much independence too young, the two of them trying—and more often than not failing—to find a new rhythm in their lives, even as the sharp pain of losing Marianne had faded to a dull ache. He thought of Sister Bernadette, her clear voice calling out to her God, who apparently didn’t always offer much comfort after all.

**

After that evening at Nonnatus House, Patrick found himself stopping more frequently to notice what was around him. He took a moment to watch the faces of new mothers, to listen to the nurses laugh as they set up the Tuesday clinic. He listened carefully while Timothy practiced the piano, and concentrated on his son’s school stories. He was ashamed to realize how little of any of this he had done in the past year and a half, and especially ashamed as he noticed how Timothy beamed under even small amounts of his attention.

He also noticed Sister Bernadette. He had known her for years, had always admired and respected her brisk efficiency and careful skill, as well as her enthusiasm for medical innovations that might improve things for their patients. Most recently, she had been an ally against Sister Evangelina’s resistance to the maternity home and to the gas and air. He always gave a sigh of relief when he saw her at a difficult birth; he trusted all the nurses and nuns implicitly, but Sister Bernadette was especially known for her magic under pressure. 

But he had known all of this for years, and only now had started paying attention. She had changed her glasses, he realized, and the new ones were quite pretty. She always had a stash of magazines for the mothers in the maternity home, and he wondered where, given her vow of poverty, she got them. On clinic afternoons, she hovered on the edge of the nurses’ conversations, smiling with them and joining in, but never looking entirely at ease. But one evening he had to stop in at Nonnatus about some case notes and found the nuns reading and sewing, and he thought she looked ill at ease there, as well.

She was perfectly comfortable, however, with Timothy. All the nuns had gone out of their way with Timothy after Marianne died, but his son was especially fond of Sister Bernadette, and she of him. 

He was returning to the surgery one afternoon from his rounds and was greeted by the sound of the two of them laughing. Patrick hovered just outside the doorway to the waiting area to watch. 

“Why can’t you trust atoms?” asked Timothy.

“I’ve no idea,” Sister Bernadette replied, her voice serious and her eyes smiling.

“Because they make up everything!” Timothy declared.

Patrick didn’t think anyone could laugh genuinely at that joke, which he’d heard Timothy tell several dozen times, but Sister Bernadette did, throwing her head back and giving in to a full belly laugh. Timothy laughed because he’d made her laugh, and Patrick felt an unexpected wave of warmth wash over him. 

“Your turn,” Timothy said.

“Hmm.” Sister Bernadette considered. “Will an apple a day keep the doctor away?” 

“Not in my experience,” Timothy quipped. “But I’m supposed to say I don’t know.” 

Sister Bernadette raised her eyebrows and smiled. “It depends on how well you aim.” 

Patrick chuckled aloud, giving away his presence. Sister Bernadette looked momentarily stunned that he had overheard her joking about throwing apples at doctors, and then broke into laughter. Timothy looked between them, skeptical.

“That’s terrible!” he tried to protest, even as he began to laugh along with the adults.

“Oh, it’s not nearly as terrible as your atom joke,” Patrick countered.

Nurse Lee stuck her head into the hall from door leading to the maternity home. “Is everything all right in here?” she asked, looking confused and vaguely perturbed about the noise.

Something about Nurse Lee’s tone combined with the expression on Sister Bernadette’s face made Patrick feel like they were misbehaving schoolchildren caught out by the headmistress—which of course struck him, and apparently also Sister Bernadette, as far funnier than the jokes themselves.

Sister Bernadette forced a neutral and proper look onto her face, though it didn’t quite mask the humor and embarrassment underneath. “We’re perfectly well, thank you, nurse.”

“Alright,” Nurse Lee said dubiously, before disappearing. Sister Bernadette lost her composure immediately, doubling over with giggles. Timothy caught them, as well, and leaned into Sister Bernadette’s side. 

Patrick felt almost as if something had come loose in his chest, something that had started to curl up tight with Marianne’s diagnosis and had stayed, like a fist clenched tighter and tighter with each passing month, ever since. He had spent these past few years terrified of not being able to hold it all together, terrified of another breakdown that would threaten him—threaten to leave his son without any parents at all—if he couldn’t keep fully in control at all times. 

Sister Bernadette wrapped an arm around Timothy, both of them still laughing. A sensation rather like joy took hold of the tightness in Patrick’s chest and loosened it even further as he watched them, and he began to laugh himself, their voices filling the hallway.

**

The birth had been long and difficult, culminating in a healthy baby boy but a hemorrhaging mother. Mrs. Kirwin’s husband was away at sea, and she had become attached to her midwife, so Patrick had sent Nurse Franklin along in the ambulance, with promises to return her bag and bicycle. And so it was after 3:00 in the morning when Patrick slipped into Nonnatus House using Nurse Franklin’s key.

The hall of the convent was dead of night quiet, but a faint light shone from the sitting room. He looked in to see a lamp on and Sister Bernadette asleep on the sofa. She was dressed in her habit, but her shoes were arranged neatly on the floor near her feet, and her wimple and glasses lay on the end table near her head. 

He had never seen her without either before, and he found himself staring despite himself. Without the glasses, and without her customary alertness, she looked very young—younger, in fact, than he knew her to be. He had always thought her attractive, especially her eyes. But even with her eyes closed, she was indeed strikingly pretty. He found himself fixing her face, like this, in his mind.

Awake, she was always in motion, and her face always expressed something: determination when she was working, or sly amusement, often directed at Sister Evangelina or Nurse Noakes. Asleep, though, she looked peaceful and untroubled. This made him realize how often she did seem troubled, or at least lost or discontented, when she was awake and thought no one was watching her. 

He was struck even more by a piece of hair that had escaped her cap and fell across her neck under her ear. Light brown, he thought, or perhaps blonde. It was difficult to tell in the dim light. He hadn’t thought to wonder about it before, and suddenly he felt a tremendous desire to see her hair uncovered. 

It was a ridiculous notion, yet he found himself taking a step toward her. A floorboard creaked under his shoe, and she jumped awake, blinking owlishly at him as she fumbled for her glasses.

“Dr. Turner?” she asked, and he watched her transform from asleep to full readiness in a moment. “What do you need?”

“Oh, nothing,” he faltered. “I’m sorry. I’d no intention of waking you or anyone. Mrs. Kirwin. Nurse Franklin went with her to hospital, and I agreed to bring back her things.” He held up the bag in his hand. “I saw the light and looked in. But I didn’t realize you were—“

“It’s quite all right,” she interrupted, stepping toward him and taking the bag from his hands. “I’m on call, but my room is along the back of the house, so I don’t always hear the telephone.”

She didn’t invite him to follow her to the clinical room, but neither did she dismiss him, so he followed, finding his eyes drawn to her stocking-clad feet as they slipped noiselessly down the dark corridor. They both squinted in the brightness as she flipped on the overhead light, and then she began emptying Nurse Franklin’s bag and preparing to clean the instruments. 

“May I help?” he asked.

“If you’d like, you can empty the autoclave so we can get these in,” she said. “But feel free to get home to Timothy if you need to.” 

He moved toward the autoclave. “Timothy is long since asleep and won’t know whether I’m there or not,” he admitted. “He sleeps like a rock. I envy him that.”

She smiled. “Yes, I think if I ever had that quality this work has long since rid me of it. Ready to go at the ring of the telephone.” 

“Occupational hazard,” he agreed. 

“How bad was it? Mrs. Kirwin?” 

“Placenta accreta, fairly serious hemorrhage. They’ll have got her to hospital in time to save her, but whether they can do so without a hysterectomy…”

“Poor thing! And her husband is at sea, no? Are there relatives to help?”

“She told Nurse Franklin her mother is in Birmingham. Hopefully we can get her down. Baby was healthy, but he and his mother will need some care.”

“I wish there were more we could do in these situations,” she said, lips pursed in concern. 

“You already do so much,” he answered, and he meant it. He thought of Nurse Franklin climbing into the ambulance with Baby Kirwin in her arms, of all the care he witnessed from the nurses and nuns day in and day out. And here, in the middle of the night, was Sister Bernadette in her cap and stocking feet, washing equipment so it would be ready for the next mother and baby who needed it. 

She turned to him then, bringing the clean things to load into the autoclave. “It’s never enough, though, is it,” she said. “We do what we can, all day, every day—and so do you, working every bit as hard. And we do make things better, I know we do. But there are still so many people we can’t do enough to help. With Doris Kirwin and her poor baby only the latest example.”

He wanted to take her hand, wanted some physical act to solidify the connection he felt to her words, to this shared striving and shared exhaustion. He settled for meeting her eye. “Yes,” he sighed. “But also think how far we’ve come. Ten years ago, would she even have received proper care, or been able to pay for it if she did manage to do so? Ten years ago, odds are that baby would be starting life without his mother.”

She continued to look at him and smiled. “We’ll be grateful for our blessings then, and you’ll forgive me for being melancholy in the middle of the night.” 

“Of course,” he agreed.

She showed him out with a promise to let him know as soon as they’d heard from Nurse Franklin, and a request to send her best to Timothy. On the front step, he turned back to look at her, illuminated by the street lamp’s glow, taking in her resolve, her smile, the curve of her ear, and the lock of hair curling beneath it.

**

She put his cigarette to her lips, and Patrick felt all of his blood rush south. He felt a little like he’d been punched as he watched her contemplate the cigarette, his cigarette, where his own mouth had just been. His hand tingled where she had touched it in the exchange, and he hung on her every word as she told him the story of stealing her father’s cigarettes when she was young. He watched her take another puff, watched her lips purse, and he wanted—oh God, he realized, he wanted _her_. 

He stood in a daze as she handed the cigarette back and stepped away to collect her bicycle. He brought the cigarette to his mouth and imagined the taste of her lips on it as he watched her walk away. 

In hindsight, he realized, he should have seen it coming: for weeks he’d been noticing her, admiring her. Even earlier this morning, as he applied pressure to stop Mrs. Carter’s bleeding, he turned to watch her save the baby and caught himself looking at her like she was a miracle. 

She was, he thought, drawing in another breath of smoke and giving himself over to this line of thought. That baby girl wasn’t the first child she’d saved and wouldn’t be the last. But somewhere along the way, one of those children she’d saved was his own son, coaxing him out of his grief, supporting him and caring for him. What if, Patrick wondered, leaning against the hood of the car and closing his eyes, what if she was saving him too, waking him up from his exhausted stupor and bringing him back to the world? 

He tried not to groan aloud. Was he really falling in love with a nun? It was out of the question. She was completely unavailable, couldn’t possibly share his feelings. And he ought to feel guilty for even thinking of her in this way. She had dedicated her life to God, yet suddenly all he could think about was touching those lips that had shared his cigarette, or freeing her hair so he could know what it felt like against his fingers. 

And quite aside from her being a nun—was he really falling in love? He had not really believed he would fall in love again, and certainly not accidentally and all at once like this. He had always loved Marianne and at the same time could never quite put his finger on when he fell in love with her. They’d been children together, friends who drifted in and out of each other’s lives for as long as they could remember, laughing their way through holiday breaks together before going their separate ways for months at a time at their separate schools, and then separate universities and separate lives.

He was home on leave in 1943 when their friendship slid sideways into something more. Though they’d made no promises to each other, he spent the grinding horrors of the latter part of the war hoping to go home to her, and the agonizing months recovering at Northfield wondering if he would ever be worthy of her. After the war, Marianne was both safe comfort and fresh start, and he always felt as though he’d been in the middle of loving her before it had ever occurred to him to begin. 

This—he took another drag on the dwindling cigarette—this felt entirely different. The sharp, sudden, and overwhelming wave of desire reminded him of being twenty-one and falling hard for Edie Mornay. That relationship had flamed out quickly, as, in hindsight, he had realized it would. (Marianne had laughed at him that Christmas: what, she had asked, had he possibly had in common with Edie Mornay?) But lustful infatuations were to be expected in twenty-one-year-old young men. 

Nearly-fifty-year-old widowers, on the other hand, were not supposed to fall mad with desire for their nun colleagues. Yet his mind was full of nothing but her lips, her eyes, the tantalizing idea of her hair and skin. His body began to hum with sensations he’d thought long dormant. And he also knew, that unlike Edie Mornay, this wasn’t merely desire without substance. They were mature adults who shared interests and values. If he let himself answer Marianne’s question now, about Sister Bernadette, he knew with sinking certainty that they had everything in common. 

The cigarette was finished, and instead of dropping it, he ground it out on the hood of the car. He rolled the butt in his fingers, imagining again her lips, his lips. He sighed and slipped the cigarette butt into his pocket. 

**

In the end, Mrs. Becknell gave birth to a large and healthy baby boy at the maternity home, and neither mother nor baby was much the worse for Patrick and the forceps being delayed on another call. It was a long and painful labor, though, and he hated to think that the nearly twenty hours could have been closer to nineteen had he been a little faster.

Sister Bernadette had been there through most of those twenty hours. She had delivered the first young Becknell, and Mrs. Becknell was insistent that no other midwife would do. Sister Bernadette was as collected and professional as always through the end of the birth, but as soon as she’d finished delivering the placenta, Patrick noticed how exhausted she looked as she stepped back to lean heavily against the wall. 

She’d been avoiding him, he thought. At first he thought circumstances were conspiring to keep them from running into each other. Over the space of several weeks, their only conversation of any substance had really been each of them talking to Timothy about his scraped elbow. But sometimes the schedules were like that; he just hadn’t had cause to notice before. Part of him agonized over not seeing her, and another part knew it was probably for the best. 

And then Nurse Miller made a passing comment about Sister Bernadette having asked to swap shifts to go on district calls rather than work in the maternity home. At the Tuesday clinic, she insisted on working the intake desk rather than seeing patients. And after a birth at which he’d attended on the weekend, she left immediately with a vague excuse, leaving him to make small talk with Nurse Lee as she finished packing her bag. That day he had intended finally to give her Timothy’s drawing, which he’d carried around with him as a kind of talisman for several weeks. But she clearly didn’t want to speak to him, so the following morning he left the drawing with Sister Julienne to deliver instead.

She must have seen his feelings, he realized. He had tried to keep everything hidden. He had tried to be nothing but professional around her since that morning with the cigarette—since that morning she had begun to inhabit his thoughts, day and night. But he must have given something away, and it alarmed her. Of course it would. The thought pained him.

He knew he should stay away from her, should simply congratulate the Becknells as Nurse Franklin was bringing Mr. Becknell in to meet his son, and slip back to his office. But Sister Bernadette really looked as though she might fall asleep on her feet, and he didn’t want that. 

He moved toward her. “You look as though you’ve earned a cup of tea. I might even be able to unearth some biscuits.”

He watched the decision play across her face: a very brief flash of pleasure, then regret, then acquiescence. Her eyes closed for a long moment. “All right, then,” she said, following him out of the delivery room.

There were no chairs in the little room that served as the surgery and maternity home’s sluice room, so she once again leaned against the wall, her eyes sliding shut. He went to the corner that housed a kettle and small cupboard and began to fix the tea. 

“I always wonder,” she said, not exactly to him, “why labor is so much more painful for some women than others. Is it that the pain tolerance varies? Or is it the nature of the pain itself?” She opened her eyes at the sound of the biscuit package opening and took the biscuit he offered. “Mrs. Becknell had the gas and air—that’s why we booked her in here in the first place, because the first birth had been so painful. And it still didn’t help nearly as much as it should have done.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he replied, though he suspected his response wasn’t required. “It was precisely women like Mrs. Becknell we were hoping to be able to help with it.”

“It does help. Most women it helps a great deal. It’s a good thing we have it, and I thank you for that, Doctor.” She met his eyes for a moment, and he had to stop himself from breaking into a smile. Then she closed her eyes again. “Maybe it’s not always about the physical pain. Another life, nurtured inside your body and then breaking free of it to go live in the world. Sometimes that’s just unbearable, even when you know it’s what should be.”

With her eyes closed, he could watch her openly, and he looked at her now with as much surprise as the evening a few months ago when she had inadvertently startled him back into his life again. Exhausted and slightly disheveled after her long day’s work, she was still beautiful. But more than that, he wanted to know what was in her mind. She was smart, thoughtful, kind, funny, and interesting—he realized this more and more every time he was around her. He wished he felt free to talk to her, about how to help their patients, about Timothy’s progress at school, about birth and life and death and faith, about everything. 

The tea kettle whistle saved him from inappropriate confidences, and Nurse Franklin breezed in for a biscuit, now that mother and baby Becknell were tucked up and resting. The three of them laughed for a moment about the efforts of Mrs. Noughton to escape her bedrest, before Nurse Franklin left again to check on the restless patient.

“It’s getting on in the evening,” Sister Bernadette remarked. “I shouldn’t keep you from Timothy.” 

“Oh, he’s at Cubs for another half hour. But yes, hopefully after that we’ll have a nice evening.” He’d been more intentional about his time with Timothy lately—something he would also credit to her and couldn’t possibly tell her about—and it was paying off for both of them. 

“Well, give him my best,” she said, smiling. He loved that she cared for Timothy. He was also relieved that she seemed more natural with him this evening than she had in weeks. Perhaps he could recover this situation without damaging their burgeoning friendship.

“I certainly will. He asks after you regularly, you know. Don’t tell the others, but you’re his not-so-secret favorite among the nuns and nurses.”

She blushed and looked terribly pleased while simultaneously trying to look like she wasn’t, and he decided this was his new favorite expression. “I am quite fond of him,” she admitted. “And now I should be on my way if I’ve any hope of dinner before compline. Thank you for the tea.”

“You’re welcome.”

He stepped to take her cup at the same moment she moved toward him. The cup rattled in the saucer as they nearly missed the exchange, and before he could think, he enveloped cup, saucer, and her hand in both of his. She was standing close enough that he heard her breath catch, and to look at him, she had to look up. 

For a moment he couldn’t breathe. He watched as her eyes dilated and her lips parted. The pulse point of her wrist was under his finger, and he could feel her pulse speed up. He felt the air rush out of his lungs as he recognized—surely not? Surely she couldn’t feel for him what he felt for her. Could it be possible she hadn’t been avoiding him because of his feelings but because of her own?

She stepped back then, and looked away. She pulled her hand away as he secured the cup and saucer, and he felt like there was nothing in the world he wanted more than to hold it again. “Thank you for the tea,” she said again, and then she was gone.

**

He had promised himself never to reveal to her how he felt. After he began to suspect she cared for him as well, that promise became harder to keep. Over the course of several weeks, it seemed as though their every attempt at an ordinary interaction turned into one of those moments from a film where everything slows as the hero and heroine gaze into each other’s eyes. He and Marianne used to laugh at those scenes—things like that never actually happened to people, they thought. 

Yet Sister Bernadette’s hand brushed his as she handed him a patient chart at the clinic, and he thought time had stopped. They looked at each other over a box of spirit lamps, and he could scarcely breathe.

They both could scarcely breathe. That was his undoing. Her expressive face, the way her breath would catch, the slight quiver in her voice. He wasn’t alone in this, and it was that knowledge that sent him barreling recklessly across the line between them. 

He kissed her hand, and then instantly wished he hadn’t. He still couldn’t imagine what had possessed him, and now he was doomed to see her in his mind, turning away from him again and again. Why on earth had he done that?

And still his dreams were full of her, full of her skin against his lips, remembered and imagined, full of foolish scenarios in which she did not turn away and events took quite another course. It was maddening. 

The more he replayed her words, the more he wondered whether he had not only crossed that invisible line but also misread the entire situation. “I’m not turning my back on you because of you,” she had said. Did that mean that she wished she didn’t have to turn away because she cared for him? Or simply that he wasn’t so inherently repulsive that she couldn’t bear to look at him? His mind twisted it into every possible permutation, until he was certain only that he wanted her as desperately as ever and that he could never, ever act on that desire again.

She had been avoiding him outright, and he couldn’t blame her. But then, today, they’d been thrown together for the entire day, fighting for the X-Ray van to screen for tuberculosis in Poplar. He hadn’t thought it possible that being alone in a car with her for an extended period of time could be anything but a dream come true, but instead, the awkward silence had been excruciating. The space between them felt like a chasm, yet she was near enough for him to smell her soap and hear every small shift she made in her seat. 

After the meeting, they returned to the car full of energy at their success, which charged the heavy silence with a nerviness he simply couldn’t bear. His brain was shouting at him to make small talk, to tell her a story about Timothy, to talk about their patients—anything to break the silence but not make the situation worse.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted instead. “For, well—“ He absolutely refused to say the word kiss to her. That could not end well. “For the other week. I behaved inexcusably.” 

“Please don’t apologize,” she said, so quietly that he wondered if she meant him to hear over the noise of the traffic. He stole a glance at her; she wasn’t looking at him.

When she didn’t continue, he found himself plowing forward. “I just wanted you to know, I entirely respect your position and you needn’t fear any other unwanted—“ He again hesitated to name outright what he’d done, and instead let the sentence hang unfinished in the thick air between them.

Traffic was heavy, and they inched along. Patrick tried to concentrate only on the road, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her fidget with her hands, twisting her ring around. He almost apologized again for making her uncomfortable, but he stopped himself as she took an audible breath, as though she’d been collecting her thoughts and had made a decision.

“It isn’t about what I want or don’t want.” She continued to stare ahead through the windscreen, and her hands had gone still again. “I have to seek what God wants.”

“Yes,” he replied. He wanted to say more but couldn’t imagine what that could be. Had she really implied that, if not for God, that what _she_ wanted—but he couldn’t let himself think about that. She was a nun. That was the only pertinent fact. What he felt didn’t matter. What she felt didn’t matter. 

He had tried, over these weeks, to think of her as he would a married woman. He knew he would never dream of falling in love with a married woman, let alone acting on those feelings. Yet his heart wouldn’t accept this line of argument. There was no husband to betray, no one to be hurt. Surely God’s love was expansive enough, that if they truly cared for one another—

But he didn’t know how to say these things to her, and they finished their drive in silence.

**

It was a different kind of silence in the car as he drove back alone from the sanatorium. They’d spent so much time together in the car lately, not speaking of the tension that filled all the space between them. But now she was gone, and the air felt thin and dull, the silence marking not her presence but her absence.

She was sick. The sentence had rattled around in Patrick’s head constantly since the moment Dr. MacGinnis handed him the X-Ray. He felt angry, nauseous, desperate. A sharp sense of déjà vu stabbed through his core as he realized how perfectly his current feelings mirrored those upon Marianne’s diagnosis. Surely, _surely_ this couldn’t end the same way. He didn’t know how he would bear it, yet whatever happened, he had to bear it for Timothy’s sake. 

The events of the past three days blurred, and against the blur, particular moments stood out. The X-Ray itself, burned on his eyes. The silences in the car. The agony of trying to conduct an examination when all he wanted to do was hold her, of glimpsing skin he had spent far too much time imagining, but in a context that seemed to mock his desires. 

He had wondered if God was punishing him, and then had wasted no time in pleading with God for her to be all right. He’d sworn he would never do that again, after the war. Then he prayed, futilely, all through Marianne’s illness, hating himself for succumbing to the temptation to call upon a God he didn’t believe in. Now, again, he’d prayed constantly for the past three days. No atheists in foxholes, indeed.

And then the moment he was still reeling from. They’d not said a word to one another as they drove out of London toward St. Anne’s. Several times he felt he should say something, but she looked only out the windows, not engaging him at all. She didn’t want to hear everything he wished he knew how to say, and platitudes seemed wholly inadequate. So they sat again in silence as the city fell away and green fields rolled before them. 

He parked the car in front of the sanatorium and took a shuddering breath to convince himself to let her go. But before he could reach for the door handle, she grasped his hand where it rested on the gear shift. Instinctively, he closed his fingers around hers, and she held on, her grip like a vise, her fingernails biting into his palm. Her eyes were closed, and while a casual observer might have though her placid, he could recognize the signs of distress in the set of her mouth and the faint line between her eyebrows. 

“Sister—“

“Don’t,” she interrupted. “Please don’t say anything at all. Please just—“

He squeezed her hand to signal his understanding, and they held onto one another for dear life.

And then it was over. She let go, pulled her hand back, opened her eyes, and took a breath. “Alright, then,” she said, seemingly half to herself.

He tried to recover. “I’ll get your bag and your door,” he responded, jumping from the car.

She walked away from him, into the building, and he drove home alone. He felt her absence in the car, and her absence as he returned to the maternity home for a few hours of work. That evening his home, where she had never been, felt empty without her. Timothy, apparently sensing his mood, was unusually quiet, and then took himself to bed early.

Patrick tried to straighten the flat, tried to read, tried to catch up on patient notes. His left hand still burned from her touch, and every time he closed his eyes he saw her walking away. He thought only of everything he wished he had been able to say to her. 

Finally, as the hour grew late and he knew he would never sleep, he sat at the table with pen and paper and began to write. 

_Dear Sister Bernadette…_


End file.
